0 Shares

Share

We can all admit that when Aigre Doux suddenly shut its doors this summer, it left a void. Literally filling it now comes French Laundry vet Brendan Sodikoff (he's currently the executive chef at Lettuce Entertain You's corporate corporate headquarters), who's transforming the River North space into a restaurant that'll be called GuildGilt, reports 312DD. Per her tipster, the resto will be "low cost," there's a likely charcuterie angle, and they're targeting a January 2010 opening.

While Guild's Gilt's concept echoes some other high-profile openings coming soon (Stephanie Izard's Drunken Goat and the Bannos-Harris-Mantuano Purple Pig are also both opening this winter, both with casual-pork-products themes), Sodikoff does have a lot going for him, like the fact that the space will be staffed by L2O vets. And then there's the nontrivial matter of Sodikoff's own culinary chops — a pastry chef by training, his desserts were once described by a critic as "so good you may want to sell a couple of pints of blood if you can't raise the scratch any other way." He's hoping for a January 2010 opening, so start raising.